Saint Matthias Episcopal Church Soup Hour volunteers feed people in need at their Washington Avenue parish Sept. 18, 2013. Volunteer Kathy Underwood said that the number of people they feed is up this year as recent census data would indicate. (Staff photo by Leo Jarzomb/Whittier Daily News)

WHITTIER >> The latest Census Bureau income, poverty and employment data was a mixed bag for the city of Whittier.

The city bucked a statewide trend of increased poverty from 2011 to 2012, but the number of Whittier residents without jobs increased during that time, and household income fell dramatically, according to the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey.

The survey found that California is one of only three states where the number and percentage of people living in poverty increased from 2011 to 2012.

In Whittier, the survey showed that the percentage of people unemployed rose from 8 percent in 2011 to 9.4 percent in 2012.

However, the percentage of Whittier families and people whose income for the past year was below the poverty level decreased from 13.8 percent to 12.3 percent, according to Census estimates.

Median household income in Whittier fell from $69,922 in 2011 to $60,408 in 2012, the report said.

On the front lines of Whittier’s war on poverty, Dottie Anderson, coordinator of the free meals program at St. Matthias Episcopal Church, said she hasn’t seen much change.

“It’s basically the same,” she said. “We serve about 100 people a day.”

In the church courtyard, those people were sitting at tables, on chairs and on the ground with plates of rice and beans, macaroni and cheese, corn on the cob, salad and bread.

“Every day I see two or three people I don’t know,” she said of people who are new to the program.

Others drop out of the program, having found jobs or moved, and others are core participants who always need help.

The mission of the program is to feed whomever comes in and provide other assistance, such as hygiene kits, mail, and finding shelter.

“My biggest difficulty is shelter,” said Anderson. “Not only for individuals, but for families, and we have no place to send them.

“All the shelters are full,” said Anderson. And the plight of the poor “is not getting better.”

While economists say the national recession officially ended in 2009, new U.S. Census data indicate that Southern Californians became increasingly impoverished at least through last year.

The state’s poverty rate climbed 3.6 percentage points from 2008 to 2012 with significant increases also in Los Angeles County in the same period, according to estimates from a U.S. Census Bureau survey released today.

On another front, Charlene Dimas-Peinado, chief executive officer of The Whole Child sees a worsening situation.

“The national child poverty rate has increased to 23 percent,” she said. “In California, we have the same rate, and for children 3 and under it’s even higher, 26 percent.

“That means that infants and toddlers are at even greater risk,” she said.

Adding to the problem, the percent of children living in single-parent homes continues to increase. It’s now 35 percent, she said.

Due to lower household incomes and greater stress on parents, the children are at greater risk of being victims of crimes, violence, homelessness, mental health problems and health problems, she said.

The Whole Child, with a budget of about $7 million a year, serves 7,000 children a year, and continually has 100 children on its waiting list.

The situation could be remedied by good-paying jobs for parents, affordable homes, safe neighborhoods and the ability of parents to invest in their children’s education, she said.

“When parents are unemployed, their children struggle,” said Dimas-Peinado. “When family income is inadequate, it creates stress on parents.”

That can lead to domestic violence and substance abuse, which can lead to child abuse or neglect.

“The demand for our services continues to grow,” she said.

Angelica Taheri, director of program operations for SPIRITT Family Services, said she hasn’t seen much change over the past three years.

However, data from SPIRITT’s South El Monte program showed an interesting trend, a slight increase in unemployment, and an increase in family income.

At South El Monte, 52 percent of the agency’s clients were unemployed this year, she said. Last year, the figure was 46 percent, and in 2010-11, it was 50 percent.

Domestic violence is a core reason families enter SPIRITT programs, she said. And that often is driven by economic hardship.

In Los Angeles County, the poverty rate also climbed 3.6 percentage points from 15.5 percent in 2008 to 19.1 percent in 2012. It rose 0.8 percentage points from 2011 to 2012, according to the Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey.

“Even through 2012, the L.A. County economy was struggling to recover and … more Los Angeles County households fell below the poverty line as a result of the lingering effects of the Great Recession,” said Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

“You’ve got people who fundamentally are going to have a more difficult time putting food on their table for their family members, who are not going to be able to get the health care they should have otherwise gotten.”

Many major local cities, including Los Angeles, Long Beach and Torrance, had no or little change in the poverty rate from 2011 to 2012.

Meanwhile, the median household income adjusted for inflation has also fallen significantly from 2008 to 2012 in these counties.

It declined from $59,196 to $53,001 in L.A. County — a 10 percent drop.

The unemployment rate climbed by 5.3 points to hit 12.2 percent in 2011, before dipping slightly to 11.6 percent in 2012.

But that dip may just have been because some people gave up looking for work, Kleinhenz said.

“There are really two consequences of the slow recovery,” he said. “People stopped looking for work — that causes the unemployment rate to improve. Even as they start looking for work, there’s a greater chance they will fall below the poverty line as a result of not being able to find work for so long.”

During the recession, those with the highest unemployment rates were young adults and those with the least amount of education. This same set of people, Kleinhenz said, is more likely to be living in poverty.

But Kleinhenz noted that more recently the local economy did “pretty well” from July 2012 to June 2013 when the unemployment was 9.9 percent in L.A. County in July, down from 11 percent a year earlier, which is not reflected in the census data.

“We’re seeing improvements take place; it just continues to be very slow, too slow for comfort,” Kleinhenz said.

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

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